Jesse Ramdeo

It is not the grand un­mask­ing many had been wait­ing for, but time will now tell if lessons were learnt when more COVID-19 re­stric­tions are lift­ed from Mon­day. Busi­ness own­ers say the move is time­ly and has reignit­ed hope for im­proved eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Anand Low Price Group of Com­pa­nies Chelsea Ram­nar­ine-Singh said the lift­ing of the re­stric­tions is the sil­ver lin­ing busi­ness own­ers were hop­ing for.

“We feel as though it’ll be the light at the end of the tun­nel for most peo­ple,” she said.

Ram­nar­ine-Singh said prepa­ra­tions have been in full swing at the group’s gyms, restau­rants and oth­er busi­ness­es to fa­cil­i­tate the lift­ing of re­stric­tions.

“We will not just open up freely we will do so in a very safe man­ner to pro­tect our pa­trons and be so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble as a busi­ness we are eval­u­at­ing how to do this in a very ef­fec­tive way right now.”

Among the mea­sures dis­con­tin­ued is the safe zone pol­i­cy and ac­cord­ing to Ryan Chin, di­rec­tor of the Dachin Group of Com­pa­nies, which in­cludes pop­u­lar restau­rant chains such as Riz­zoni’s and Texas de Brazil, cus­tomers will now be served an im­proved ex­pe­ri­ence.

Chin stat­ed: “The safe zones had a lot of dis­ad­van­tages we have had a lot of sit­u­a­tions where we had to refuse guests, so a lot of that put us in a bit of a hot seat where we had to rea­son with guests and have that type of con­fronta­tion. That part is a huge re­lief where we don’t have to have that kind of run-in with guests and so on.”

How­ev­er, Bar Own­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Satesh Moonasar said there will still be a mea­sured ap­proach to op­er­a­tions come Mon­day.

“We are hap­py for this. This is some­thing we have not been able to do since Au­gust of 2020 and this is some­thing we have been look­ing for­ward to for quite some time. It will be the start of the re­build­ing process for our in­dus­try and we look for­ward to bet­ter things, but it will be a work in progress.”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the lift­ing of the re­stric­tions two years in­to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hinged on in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when he an­nounced their re­moval. He al­so said mask-wear­ing out­doors re­mains the law. Peo­ple are al­so be­ing en­cour­aged to con­tin­ue wash­ing hands and so­cial dis­tanc­ing.